It has been known to provide systems such as retail registers and change machines for storing and enabling the dispensing of payouts at locations such as retail stores or the like. A large supply of money had to be kept on hand at such locations, to cover substantial transactions, requiring inefficient and inconvenient refilling of such supply on a relatively frequent basis. Further, such large supplies of money were maintained in relatively insecure retail registers and/or change machines at such locations, where such machines were subject to theft of the money by criminals and/or attendants.
It has been further known in jurisdictions where gambling is legal, such as Nevada, to have gaming machines at locations such as convenience stores, grocery stores, taverns, or the like, as for example video poker machines and/or electronic slot machines. The gaming machines may include coin hoppers for receiving coins for game play and for storing coins for payment of payouts such as cash outs and/or jackpots resulting from the play of the game. The coin hoppers in such machines had to be refilled relatively frequently due to substantial payouts. Further, large amounts of money had to be kept on hand at such remote locations, to cover substantial payouts incurred at such machines beyond the amount of coins in the coin hoppers. Also, such large amounts of money were maintained in relatively insecure retail registers and/or change machines at such locations, where such machines were also subject to theft of the money by criminals and/or attendants.
In addition to such refilling and security issues, in a route type environment, wherein the route may comprise locations remote from each other for refilling retail registers, change machines, and/or gaming machine coin hoppers, the frequency of refilling has greatly increased and has become very much of an inconvenience. In such route type environments, particularly for gaming machine locations, the inconvenience of frequent refilling has escalated with the popularity of bill acceptors in gaming machines, where the coin hoppers are not replenished with coins played into the machine, whereby payouts cannot be made from the coin hopper without emptying it.
Therefore, those concerned with the development and use of improved payout storage and control systems and methods and the like have recognized the need for improved systems and methods for enabling a substantial supply of payouts to be securely stored and for controlling the dispensing of the payouts, so as to reduce the need for frequent refilling thereof.
Accordingly, the present invention fulfills these needs by providing efficient and effective systems and methods for securely storing and controlling the dispensing of a payout, so as to enable a substantial supply of payouts to be securely stored, to reduce the need for refilling of the payout supply, and to control the dispensing of a payout.